Governance, Crime and Surveillance

The same is arguably true of the three subjects to be covered below, though it has to be acknowledged that the potential for detrimental interventions by policy-makers is here more obvious and direct. It is part of my aim to show why. Even more than in other chapters the themes dealt with here are so vast that, to make things manageable, the principal aim is to distinguish those threads which connect all three. The literature on governance is recent and multiplies in ever new directions with every wave of public sector reform and so what I do below is identify the two features of contemporary society to which I think it most usefully draws attention. The first of these is then illustrated by reviewing the key theoretical debates about crime and social policy; the second feature is discernible in ongoing discussions of the surveillance society.